Dustin sent me a fantastic link last night over on Letters of Note, a website that puts up old letters of note that have been dug out of one archive or another. Vonnegut's letter home to his family about his time in Dresden is in there for instance, and a letter of Albert Einstein to a religious philosopher late in his life. It's one of those niche websites that you can find yourself spending three hours in, without watching a cat do something cute even a single time.

Ah, but before your morning disappears reading old letters, first take a look at the "Star Trek" one, in which Gene Roddenberry and Isaac Asimov devolve from snarkiness into friendship. There are a few letters in which Roddenberry and Asimov discuss the evolution of the characters of Kirk and Spock, in particular how to balance out the tendency of strong and interesting side characters to take over the story from the main character who has to play it straight by necessity. At least from a writer's point of view, it's fascinating to read two storytellers musing over particular characters and what they're trying to do with them years after the fact.

But the gem of the pile of letters is the first one chronologically, the initial contact between Roddenberry and Asimov after the latter published a snarky, but bordering on scathing, indictment of scientific inaccuracies in "Star Trek." Roddenberry sent Asimov a letter (on paper! Through the pony express!) arguing for leniency.

It's easy to forget in this age of genre television just how groundbreaking something like "Star Trek" was for its time. As Roddenberry argues, getting this show on television was just about impossible. The studio wanted make it a juvenile series, add a "Lassie" and scoffed at bringing in science fiction authors to write scripts. He describes how they employed physicists in order to correct scripts, but even so the scientific errors criticized by Asimov snuck through.

On a surface read, it would be simple to dismiss Roddenberry's words as just excusing sloppy work by citing the difficulty. And there is some of that. But the heart is much more interesting, arguing that at least for now, this is the only game in town as far as science fiction on television is concerned. He appeals to Asimov that they are exposing millions of people who would never dream of picking up a paperback with a rocket on the cover to dreams of the stars and science. Don't let perfection be the enemy of the good.

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Comments Are Welcome, Bigots and Trolls Are Not

Red Ben

Lovely stuff.And not a cat to be lol'd at.(And no mention of Erwin Schrodinger.)

Dragonchild

No, that's only because you read it. Before you read it, the letter's wavefunction included the states of having and not having LOLcats.

Clancys_Daddy

If you can find a copy I recommend "The making of Start Trek" by Roddenberry and Whitfield,.Del Ray publishing 1968. It's the ultimate reference for what the show started out as and what it became according to Roddenberry's own words. Yeah it's an old book and I have an original copy that makes me a really old nerd.

mike_10009

Ditto, Green Lantern.

Green Lantern

I also have an old copy, fellow nerd!

Miss Laaw-yuhr

I am saddened by the lack of comments because this post made my day. Seeing those nice letters between Asimov and Roddenberry was like finding out that two of your friends are actually friends too and you didn't know they even knew each other but now all three of you can hang out and it's awesome.

DarthCorleone

I loved these letters. Thanks for sharing them.

It brought to mind this...http://leethomson.myzen.co.uk/......which for all I remember might have been one of your recommendations on Pajiba a while back. If you haven't seen it, though, it's a cool piece of history for Trek fans.

idiosynchronic

Asmiov, look at Slashdot and see what you hath wrought.

John W

Can you imagine that conversation taking place over twitter?

branded_redux

"Srsly, 3 Laws? 1 Law or GTFO!"

BWeaves

Yes, I can. They wouldn't have time to cool down and think through their responses. It would devolve into, "Says you!" and "Na-ah!"